Description of Session
When your music app asks you to log in to go online, then tells you you need to be in online mode to log in? That’s #offlineworst. In the last 5 years the digital tools that back development have made huge strides in their maturity. Many teams have had the time to invest in modern UI’s, making it feel like software in our market is “catching up.” It can be easy to forget that underneath the hood these apps are solving technical challenges like asynchronous offline transaction management that are seriously hard. So hard, in fact, that large and well financed consumer software teams mostly avoid even attempting to address them. When they do the results are often equal parts frustrating and comical. In this light hearted talk we will review the at-times kafkaesque outcomes that have arisen from popular consumer software’s attempts to implement requirements which are foundational to the most basic software tools used in our field. We use this backdrop to celebrate the continuing success of systems in digital development to reach increasing scales, but also as a sobering reminder of the invisible and essential ‘weight’ that these systems carry with them; and the cost that comes with it.
